08 June 2025.
Everyday ‘is’ World Ocean Day.
Fishers, locals and nature-lovers all benefit from a healthy ocean.

Welcome to our eighth blog, guest authored by Anna Ford to celebrate World Ocean Day.

When Sussex Bay launched almost a year ago (June 2024), the Head of Sussex Bay, Dean Spears, stood on the stage at the packed-out Brighton Dome event, and told the fishing community that Sussex Bay would stand by them.

That pledge prompted a spontaneous round of applause. It was a critically important commitment to have made. So, ahead of Sussex Bay’s one year anniversary, and to mark World Ocean Day, this seems a good moment to reflect on the topic.

There’s a relatively prevalent misconception that the rewilding of the ocean must be bad news for local people who make a living by fishing. And the arrival of Sussex Bay, with its stated intention to restore nature to the county’s waterways, left some people asking questions. Would that be at the expense of people? Of swimmers? Of fishers?  

But in fact, the goals of fisheries, conservationists and local people are aligned: everyone gains from a healthier, more bountiful ocean. 

Research has shown that small-boat fishers working just outside Marine Protected Areas benefit significantly. They reap heavier nets as the nearby sanctuaries overflow with life. David Attenborough’s wonderful new film Ocean illustrates this point brilliantly. One fisher featured in it, who works alongside a marine reserve, told the film-makers: “I think every fisherman I know will acknowledge the fact that the reserves are working. It's amazing thing to see how abundant the species is.”

Sustainable fishing on small boats by communities has been happening for millennia, amid thriving marine ecosystems. Where this happens, fishers working sustainably simply become part of the ecosystem. 

But things have changed. And there are real challenges for Sussex’s fishing communities. Fishing is a hard way to make a living, and huge, international trawlers scraping all life from the seabed present really tough competition for local small-boat fishers. Only last month, the UK government agreed to extend licences for the EU to continue this practice in our waters. While much of Sussex Bay is in a marine protected area, trawlers are not banned from all of it. 

Industrial, commercial and agricultural pollutants still flow into the ocean, adding sewage, chemicals and excess nutrients to the water. And we are currently experiencing a really significant marine heat wave, something that will only happen more frequently as our climate destabilises. 

All of these things impact local fishers and the health of their catch. Sussex Bay could hardly have arrived on the scene at a more urgent moment.

In the first year, the Sussex Bay team have shown fishers they meant it when they said they would stand by them. One of their first moves was to project manage, and part-fund with partners, the restoration of a new community hub for fishers in Worthing. The rotunda building has lain dormant for years, having been boarded up after anti-social behaviour. Now, fully restored by a collaboration of groups, it is on the cusp of being officially re-opened. The rotunda will provide a meeting point, shelter from biting winds, with a kitchen, toilet and shower for fishers. But more than that: it offers a refrigerated space where fishers’ catch can be safely stored. That means what they catch will last longer, making their businesses more viable and reducing waste.

Sussex Bay has been working with fishers in other ways too. Along with Sarah Ward from the Sussex Wildlife Trust, who chairs the Sussex Fishing Net Partnership and Lydia Harvey from Shoreham Port, the team are funding and project-managing the recycling of disused fishing nets. There are collection points Worthing, Bognor, Newhaven and Shoreham Port and plans for more. In the last six months, the project in Worthing alone has recycled over at least 4 tonnes of nets, which might otherwise have been incinerated, sent to landfill or discarded in the ocean – all of which have ecological consequences. Instead, these nets are now either reused or recycled into things like surf boards and sunglasses. At least twice a year, Sarah, Lydia and Dean roll up their sleeves, head down to the collection points, and help haul the nets out of the skips for recycling with the support of local fishing communities.  The team will publish more inspiring outcomes later this year across the portfolio of collection sites, we can’t wait!

Without this project, the fishing community, which is already facing real financial hardship, would have to pay for the disposal of their disused nets themselves.

The Sussex Bay team always say that theirs, or ours, is a project of hope. And with examples like these, it does feel that way. 

Chatting to me recently, Dean said: “A lot of people don’t realise that in the UK, there is no sustainable funding for ocean restoration. And so, Sussex Bay’s mission is to generate a £50 million fund by 2050 for nature recovery along Sussex seascape to make a start with the estimated £56 billion funding gap for UK waters identified by The Green Finance Institute and others.  That includes supporting projects and engaging communities. Sussex Bay is as much about people as it is about nature. 

“We want future generations to know and love the Sussex coastline and to be able to bathe and fish in healthy waters in a sustainable way, in parity with nature.”